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The Art of Literary Tourism: an Approach to Washington Irvings "Sketch Book"

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The Art of Literary Tourism: an Approach to Washington Irvings The Art of Literary Tourism: An Approach to Washington Irvings "Sketch Book" DAVID SEED WEN The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon first appeared in Britain it was received with magisterial surprise by Francis Jeffrey who saw it as a turning-point in American literature. He expresses surprise that a work written by an American and originally published in America "should be written throughout with the greatest care and accuracy, and worked up to great purity and beauty of diction," and then continues: It is the first American work, we rather think of any description, but certainly the first purely literary production, to which we could give this praise; and we hope and trust that we may hail it as the harbinger of a purer and juster taste.... for the writers of that great and intelligent country.1 Jeffrey hesitates here because, as other critics of the 1818-1820 period recognized, the only other American work which might measure up to this praise was Franklin's Autobiography. It is particularly significant that he should point out the historical importance of The Sketch Book in Anglo-American literary relations before he comments on the book's intrinsic merits. William Cullen Bryant followed exactly the same procedure in his i860 address on Irving.2 Of course it is theoretically possible that Irving's miscellany might have gained this recognition, a recognition which masks the origin of its status as an American classic, without external circumstances having any direct effect on the book itself. But such is not the case. In Bracebridge Hall (1822), the sequel to The Sketch Book, Irving expresses amused surprise at the way the earlier work was received: "It has been a matter of marvel, that a man from the wilds of America should express himself in 68 DAVID SEED tolerable English."3 In both works Irving gently ridicules the prejudiced expectations on the part of an average British reader that he will have to cope with some kind of wild or uncouth writer by adopting a stance of conscious urbanity. More than that, in Bracebridge Hall Irving tacitly admits that the honey• moon period in his relation to his readers is now over, and he states "I wish to forestall the censoriousness of the reader."4 In fact this is by no means a new anxiety on Irving's part. Through• out The Sketch Book he constantly adopts an attitude of apology towards his own writings. Again and again he rounds off a sketch with a self-denigrating admission that he has been too verbose, or too trite, or more detailed than his subject warrants. At the end of "The Christmas Dinner," for instance, he imagines a reader accusing him of triviality and deflects the charge by generalizing: "It is so much pleasanter to please than to instruct — to play the companion rather than the preceptor."5 Although at times this sort of gesture can become an irritating mannerism, it can also be an ingenious tactic for anticipating hostile reactions from the reader. By making it absolutely explicit that his sketches are light Irving makes the charge of superficiality so obvious that in effect it becomes an irrelevance. There are various reasons why Irving should incorporate with• in his text an admission that it is dealing with light subjects, and an undoubtedly important one is political. His anticipatory defensiveness is specifically directed towards British readers and the essay "English writers on America" examines the situation which made such defensiveness necessary. At the beginning of the piece he questions the grounds for British hostility towards America and puts it down to the nationalistic bias of British travellers abroad — a fault which Irving takes extreme care to avoid in The Sketch Book. Before he waxes too lyrical about the advantages of the new republic Irving seems to sense that he might be antagonizing his British readership and dissipates his criticism through a parent-child analogy between the two coun• tries, America of course being the child. And thus by shifting his tack in mid-essay Irving comes round to the flattering conclu• sion that "there is no country more worthy of our study than England" (I, 98). As Benjamin Lease has recently pointed out, WASHINGTON IRVING'S "SKETCH BOOK" 69 this essay has an important historical status in The Sketch Book. Irving was writing at a time when Anglo-American relations were particularly tense and by performing a diplomatic balanc• ing act throughout this essay Irving pleads for an end to rancour and avoids the nationalistic extremes of either side.6 In the statement quoted above "study" sounds too rigorous for Irving's actual method since The Sketch Book follows the broad analogy of a tour. We begin with the crossing ("The Voyage") which is followed by a Liverpool sketch ("Roscoe") and some preliminary general views of British customs and atti• tudes ("English writers on America" and "Rural Life in Eng• land"). The main bulk of the book alternates London sketches with rural ones, here again mimicking local excursions within the broad tour — excursions to Windsor ( "A Royal Poet" ) and to Stratford, for instance. In "The Author's Account of Himself" Irving makes his stance as tourist quite explicit: I have wandered through different countries and witnessed many of the shifting scenes of life. I cannot say that I have studied them with the eye of a philosopher, but rather with the sauntering gaze with which humble lovers of the picturesque stroll from the window of one print shop to another, caught sometimes by the delineations of beauty, sometimes by the dis• tortions of caricature, and sometimes by the loveliness of land• scape. As it is the fashion for modern tourists to travel pencil in hand and bring home their portfolios filled with sketches, I am disposed to get up a few for the entertainment of my friends. (1,5) Here again he rejects anything as intensive as study for saunter• ing. Irving casts himself as a flaneur responsive to any momen• tary sight or impression, but above all moving at an unhurried pace. The Sketch Book is thus the direct product of tourism. In this passage it is interesting to note the care with which Irving avoids attributing too much weight to his own literary enterprise. It is, at least by the portfolio analogy, not original; similarly there are strong suggestions of genial amateurishness particularly in the concluding phrase "for the entertainment of my friends." From the very beginning Irving tries to establish a relaxed con• versational intimacy with the reader who is invited to accom- 70 DAVID SEED pany the author on his excursions. This intimacy is all the easier because Irving consistently denies any particular expertise. He denies philosophical insight and even originality in his under• taking by identifying it with current fashions. Lease argues that the narrative voice is crucial here : The poetry of Crayon's spell is intensified by the persona he creates of the alienated observer, whose self-deprecatory touches suggest that he is not really at home in England or in his own land....7 We shall see many examples of this stance which anticipates later treatments of Europe by Hawthorne and James. The tour-analogy gives Irving an opportunity to pun about his own discursiveness. He describes "The Angler" as a "ram• bling sketch" which is literally true because it centres on a stroll along the banks of the River Alun. It is also analogically true in the sense that the sketch opens with reflections on living's boy• hood reading; the specific memory of Izaak Walton leads him on to boyhood fishing expeditions, which leads logically into his encounter with the Cheshire fisherman. The associations are by no means arbitrary but avoid any impression of careful planning and in that the linkages are typical of the whole book. We could thus see the ramble as a metaphor of the book's own predict• ability and absence of solemn purpose. In Bracebridge Hall the invitation to the reader is made clear: "to ramble gently with me, as he would saunter out into the fields, stopping occasionally to gather a flower, or listen to a bird, or admire a prospect, without any anxiety to arrive at the end of his career."8 The very sentence itself slows down to a leisurely survey of possibilities which muffle the reader's desire for a specific conclusion. One of the differences between The Sketch Book and its sequel, how• ever, is that in the latter the reader is based at the Hall and makes trips to nearby villages, gypsy encampments, etc. In other words the notion of the ramble is far more literal, whereas in The Sketch Book the ramble or tour becomes an analogue which holds together quite different kinds of writing. When disembarking at Liverpool Irving noted "I was a stran• ger in the land" (I, 18) and many of his sketches bear out WASHINGTON IRVING'S "SKETCH BOOK" 71 Henry James's later generalization that "Americans in Europe are outsiders."9 At times Irving indulges in a kind of social voyeurism as when he attends country funerals. His stance as spectator only becomes useful when he can build this into a perspective which defamiliarizes the subject of the particular sketch. In "The Art of Bookmaking" a viát to the British Mu• seum is interrupted when Irving sees a "strange-favored being, generally clothed in black" emerging from a room in the interior. Dramatizing his mock-courage as that of an knight errant, Irving penetrates this mysterious sanctum and discovers a room full of "studious personages" scribbling industriously.
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